Dr. Espy-Wilson's top priority, since arriving in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University, has been to establish a laboratory where digital signal processing techniques and speech science are combined to conduct studies in speech communication. Her long term career goal is to have an active research laboratory within an academic setting. Boston University (BU) is an ideal setting for this establishment given its commitment to Signal Processing in general, and Speech Processing in particular, and given the many resources available at BU and at surrounding institutions. The teaching requirements in the department is 4 courses per academic year. During her first five years, Dr. Espy-Wilson was able to buy out of two courses a year with a Clare Boothe Luce Chair that she was awarded upon appointment. In addition, all faculty are expected to serve on academic and administrative committees. The RCA would allow Dr. Espy-Wilson to further the building of her research program by providing her with the time needed for more research and scholarship (preparation of manuscripts, graduate student, collaborations with colleagues). This extra research time will result in increased productivity from her lab. The research in Dr. Espy-Wilson's lab is focused on 1) the development of an event-oriented paradigm for speech recognition based on phonetic features, 2) using the development of the recognizer as a tool for studying speech variability and speech production and 3) using acoustic phonetic knowledge and signal processing (e.g., static and adaptive filters) to develop aids for people having difficulty in producing natural sounding speech (whether due to a with speech impairment, hearing loss or learning of a second language)...